Are social media conferences losing their effectiveness

Have you attended a recent social media conference and heard someone talk and at the end of the presentation you didn’t learn anything of value. One of my pet peeves is when a presenter talks about these platforms and shows us all kinds of figures like:

700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

YouTube has 490 million unique users per month

There are 190 million Tweets per day

Because of these numbers, we are supposed to be in awe and kick ourselves for not taking advantage of making a name for ourselves on these platforms. Also, they promote their service or product and at first you feel like you are really missing out.

Then, you will hear common themes:

Content is king

You must engage not sell

You must find your customers on each social media platform

How many talk about writing good content or how to engage. How do people find their customers on social media platforms? These are the topics that people should be talking about, but they are few and far between. The biggest reason is, they really don’t know themselves.

I came across an excellent article on a person who attended a conference and had these thoughts. I have reread this article many times because it really says a lot about how we are falling in this huge trap of attending social media conferences but no one is learning anything.

This is a must read, and if you are like me you will really relate to the information presented in the article.

I decided to start this blog, because I really wanted to talk about the processes involved with social media and not what it is or how these platforms are growing. This week, I have talked about Google+ Company Pages. I have shared 5 things you need to do with respect to your Google+ Company Page. It’s early in the process yet and I am currently working on a good systematic way to draw more people to my company page. When I find something, I will post it.

I really find social media to be a fascinating channel and it isn’t some cookie-cutter system that can be used for each company. Each company has different marketing resources, products and services to promote and sell. It comes down to making a profit and executives know this.

The more we can learn from each other regarding the ways we are using social media in our companies, the better we will all be in the future. As the article states,

“I was struck by one thought. This is a whole new world and we are only just beginning. Most people do not know how to use it effectively except perhaps the people who do the tweeting for Lady Gaga.”

Make sure you are learning how to be more effective on these platforms. The next time you attend a social media conference or social media tips presentation, please do the following:

Check out the speaker’s credentials first and see how active they are on social media

Ask the presenter “how to” questions or “what actions are most effective”

Finally, meet up with people who work with these platforms on a daily basis

Your time is valuable. Make sure you check out more information on the topics being presented at an upcoming conference and perform a little background check. This time spent could save you a day of listening to facts and figures.